Edward Aspinall (17 June 2014): “Indonesia’s democracy is in danger” (blaming Prabowo). Now Michael Buehler is blaming Gamawan Fauzi, Ryaas Rasyid & Jusuf Kalla. I’m waiting for other “experts on Indonesia” BRAVE enough to blame Yudhoyono (just like thousands of Indonesia’s netizens have been doing currently).
Is the best way to distinguish regional heads of government to define them either as bureaucrats/business people on the one hand or journalists, civil society activists etc on the other? Incidentally, even ‘ordinary Indonesians’ need some form of employment, so this category is not sociologically precise.
Jokowi himself comes from a private sector background. One could admittedly say that he lacked ‘close ties to the state’, but his main business partner, Luhut Panjaitan, certainly hasn’t lacked such ties. And Jokowi began his career during the Soeharto era, as anybody now of his age had to do in order to eat.
Does the author really mean ‘bureaucrats and big businessmen’ versus ‘small businessmen’? Even so, it could be that regional heads’ social backgrounds are not necessarily sure guides to their behaviour in office. After all, Indonesia’s most venal and rapacious president was not exactly born in the lap of luxury nor did he run around the corridors of a palace as a child.
The abuses against women continue to this day and they are not confined to the elite. You only need to read the daily papers or watch a Thai soap opera. I absolutely agree that these cultural norms are obscene from a modern western perspective but then we should also look at the revelations of showbiz paedophilia and sexual harassment currently being witch-hunted in the UK where 50 years ago such attitudes were perhaps common place. Getting away from Anna here but also saying it’s not only an issue for elites but evolutions in social morality/political correctness or call it what you will. I will end with saying that if a society is going to change the critical mass must want it to change. ..and I think it’s still a long ways off in “old Siam”…
“… Anna more generally saw Thai attitudes toward sexuality …”
This should read “Siamese attitudes”, I reckon. Can someone please tell from what point in history one can speak of Thai history. Wasn’t it Phibul who put the h in Tai?
Like previous commentators, I think the issue is not so much what has been achieved but the potential for change that direct elections had. It has to be more that just an “irritant” otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to abolish them. Furthermore, the question that the author fails to ask is: Why now? I think the answer is obvious
I’m commenting this post a bit late, but let me add my two cents given what I’ve seen happening in the past few months.
Any hopes of followers of the “Red Corruption” discourse that the coup and the junta could reduce corruption were misguided. I’m directly involved in a several multi-billion dollar projects requiring a number of regulatory approvals, and it’s now very clear that military proxies will be receiving significant kick-backs if those projects are to move forward. Just scan the newspapers and read between the lines: projects cancelled despite previously receiving regulatory approval and then resurrected with new developers and contractors, consolidation of regulatory authority, reassignments of dozens of senior civil servants, the list goes on and on. To be fair, I was prepared to pay kick-backs under the elected government as well. But in this “Green Corruption” era the corruption is completely unchecked – the pro-coup alliance are wallowing in hypocrisy, waiting for some crumbs, or are too afraid to speak out.
Aside from huffing and puffing about your surname and broadcasting you and your family’s reach at Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, you have NOT really answered my question TorrEnce (with the capital “E” is it)? Since you or your large family know quite a lot of important Northern people considering you/your wife’s relatives with the “police, army, government and Northern business people, was there even a single “big shot ya ba/heroin” drug trafficker at the North blacklisted and executed during Thaksin’s war on drugs?
Come to think of it the Shinawatras’ (see New Mandala’s very interesting article “The Shinawatra Family Tree” http://www.newmandala.org/2011/08/08/the-shinawatra-family-tree/) Northern roots and political influence go way way way back. I mention this to underscore the point that probably every big time Northern drug trafficker must be known and known intimately to Thaksin/Shinawatra political clan. I repeat, every single big time Northern drug trafficker, must already be intimately known to Thaksin himself … including their Burmese sources. But had Thaksin himself submitted his personal blacklist of these known big time traffickers? Or are/were these big time Northern traffickers under Thaksin’s ‘protection’, after ages of ‘family associations and business/personal dealings’ and the Northern blacklist only included, as R.N. England sagely suggested, the ‘unlucky ones’ who were business rivals of “traffickers under Thaksin’s protection”?
Despite TorrEnce claims of knowing the “Who’s Who” of Northern drug trafficking, the reality is nearly every person at Chieng Mai/Chieng Rai appear to know who are engaged in ya ba/heroin trafficking at the North, big or small time; see http://www.irrawaddy.org/shan/an-open-secret-an-illicit-trade-without-end.html.
—–
Excerpts: “that drug trafficking is an open secret–and a lucrative trade–in the region.
In conversations with several sources from narcotics circles, including drug dealers, addicts and former drug convicts, all said the drug business here is hardly hush-hush, and despite drug eradication efforts, there is no end in sight for the illegal trade.
Thai drug addict Aie Chai (not his real name), who lives in Fang, said he makes good money selling yaba, which he also consumes himself in order to work harder on his farm.
Fully etched with tattoos on his hands and legs, Aie Chai claimed the drug is a performance enhancer when it comes to manual labor. “Many farmers here also use yaba to work harder. But some buyers are teenagers. People here know who is selling yaba and where to get it. But they don’t talk about it, as it’s normal practice to them.”
Many dealers are arrested, some of them repeatedly. Several small-time sellers are also repeatedly jailed, then released. Aie Chai said he also was once arrested and temporarily detained. A bribe paid to police by his mother and sister was his extrajudicial ticket to freedom. His neighbor, Channat, who also requested that her real name not be used, agreed with Aie Chai. Pointing to several houses near her home, she said the owners of those neighboring residences also sold yaba. “Many of them get rich, own property and businesses because they sell yaba,” Channat said. “My aunt also got rich because of this [the drug trade]. Her husband is a big dealer. He is always in secret places as he is being hunted by police.” For Channat, it is something of a family trade. “My uncle is a big dealer,” she continued. “He met with Khun Sa [a Burmese warlord who died in 2007] in Burma. Now, he can’t stop doing this business. If he stops, he will be killed by his associates because he knows the drug network well …”
The name is
TorrEnce, get it right if you are going to use it! I here lived in this Corridor between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for 25 years. I know a lot of people, from government employees to businessmen to farmers, and this is my wifes home area, so she knows quite a lot of people, as she is also from a large family with relatives all around the North, farmers, police, army, govt employees, and business people.n There is no “inside intelligence”, I have been here, and have known people who were killed and with some, by whom.
It’s possible that she was just rehashing old stories, but in my view it is more likely that she was telling the truth, and was vilified for doing so – a fate that has befallen many truth-tellers about Thailand over the centuries.
As I tried to make clear in my comments, the abuses against women in old Siam were by no means unique in a global context. But some countries confront and analyse their past and try to draw useful lessons from it. The Thai elite seem determined to erase the inconvenient details of their past, and to unfairly discredit anyone who challenges their mythologizing.
there as simiiar ceremonies in Thailand today in house construction (with coins and flowers but not humans as far as I know-though there have been allegations….)
Is it not more likely Andrew that Anna .L was rehashing the Van Vliet account to spice up her stories? similar to the Taptim account?
However as there is still a market for mummified baby foetuses, human body parts and dried tiger penis etc in SE Asia where do we draw the line? Also bear in mind in Van Vliets day they were still burning witches at home and slaving whilst apparently criticising Siamese barbarities.
Of course, Michael is right that many of the old crocodiles still rule, and that the “good examples” are few and far between. But I rather agree with Chris that those few good examples are opening people’s eyes to the possibility of political participation on the part of those who have little interest in messing with the old guard.
I’ve just spent a month in parts of NTT which I had last visited in 2012, well before the presidential elections. I find the political conversation in coffee stalls and markets has changed, has become far less about “orang gitu2 aja” and far more about the power of the vote. Michael suggests that power is infrequently used to achieve real change, and I agree. But the very fact that people are beginning to talk about it is [oops, WAS} surely an important interim step.
Not quite sure how Andrew can reorganise the Australian Academia and University system from Scotland, his obsession with lesse majeste is going nowhere. There are plenty of things to do and it could be a good idea if Thailand decides for itself without Andrew’s and the intellectual left we smile at every day.In Maha Sarakham we hear quite a move away from PTT and redshirt. There is good reason to believe this will not be a short lived Military regime.
There is really no need to analyse Najib’s speech. Sometimes, I think he does not understand his own speech, being written by some highly paid speech writer for him to look good.
His speeches, not only does not have consistency, they also contradict his action at home in Malaysia. Just the very notion of his support of the “ALLAH” word use in Malaysia is enough to call him a “crap” artist
This is a good realistic article. But my sense is that the abolition of direct elections is a sad event not because of what they have achieved since 2005 but what they only recently seemed on the verge of achieving – most notably the emergence of more independent civil society candidates outside the political elite like Jokowi and the ability of the electorate to more frequently oust corrupt and apathetic executives. In retrospect, these positive consequences of direct elections required time. But now they will be returned to the realm of the impossible with election via DPRDs.
Pls track for me my roots:-
1. My grandfathers name is Mungilan.
2. My Uncle’s son’s name Varathan
3. My fathers name is Murugan s/o Mungilan
5. My father born in Arakkonam Village in
1898, Nemeli Post.
6. He left india under kangani system to
work as a labourer in Melaka. Kindly help me i want to visit Arakkonam Village to see my roots but how who can help. What information do you need to track my family in Arakkonam village in india. TQ kannan
Thank you for this timely article, Prof. Robinson, it’s wonderful to see Zubaidah Djohar’s poems published in English.
A few comments on the analysis:
“Rumoh Geudong” is actually a historical and physical space, not just a metaphorical one. It is the notorious former military post in Pidie, where hundreds were killed, tortured and raped, so it is the very symbol of violence against women.
Secondly, with all due respect to the thoughtful reflections and analysis here, my own reading (based on what I know from my 15 years of working on Aceh and studying questions of violence and memory) is slightly different. I feel that Zubaidah’s poems offer us a glimpse not so much of how “the brutish daily struggle of armed resistance carried out by men transforms them into ‘demon lovers’ who become cruel and indifferent to their own womenfolk”, but rather of the ways in which rape imposes upon both Acehnese women and men cycles of violation, shame, rejection and despair. Acehnese men are violated also, physically and directly and also through the violence against Acehnese women, which destroys their honour both as men and as Acehnese. It is not, then, in my opinion, so much about Acehnese men’s “cruelty and indifference” but rather (or, perhaps, also) about the how both women and men suffer from the conflict, but that they suffer differently and in ways that alienate each from the other and deepen cycles of violence and suffering.
Who vetted the ‘blacklist’ demanded by Thaksin that started the execution rampage, without due process, of thousands of ‘no name’ Thais during Thaksin’s war on drugs? It seems there was not a single big shot drug trafficker among the thousands killed ..
But maybe in Chiang Mai perhaps a well-known ya ba trafficker was blacklisted and executed … if the well-informed Ron Torrance could share his ‘inside intelligence’ of Thaksin’s ‘successful war on drugs’ in that area.
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The reassertion of the state
Edward Aspinall (17 June 2014): “Indonesia’s democracy is in danger” (blaming Prabowo). Now Michael Buehler is blaming Gamawan Fauzi, Ryaas Rasyid & Jusuf Kalla. I’m waiting for other “experts on Indonesia” BRAVE enough to blame Yudhoyono (just like thousands of Indonesia’s netizens have been doing currently).
The reassertion of the state
Is the best way to distinguish regional heads of government to define them either as bureaucrats/business people on the one hand or journalists, civil society activists etc on the other? Incidentally, even ‘ordinary Indonesians’ need some form of employment, so this category is not sociologically precise.
Jokowi himself comes from a private sector background. One could admittedly say that he lacked ‘close ties to the state’, but his main business partner, Luhut Panjaitan, certainly hasn’t lacked such ties. And Jokowi began his career during the Soeharto era, as anybody now of his age had to do in order to eat.
Does the author really mean ‘bureaucrats and big businessmen’ versus ‘small businessmen’? Even so, it could be that regional heads’ social backgrounds are not necessarily sure guides to their behaviour in office. After all, Indonesia’s most venal and rapacious president was not exactly born in the lap of luxury nor did he run around the corridors of a palace as a child.
Review of Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens
The abuses against women continue to this day and they are not confined to the elite. You only need to read the daily papers or watch a Thai soap opera. I absolutely agree that these cultural norms are obscene from a modern western perspective but then we should also look at the revelations of showbiz paedophilia and sexual harassment currently being witch-hunted in the UK where 50 years ago such attitudes were perhaps common place. Getting away from Anna here but also saying it’s not only an issue for elites but evolutions in social morality/political correctness or call it what you will. I will end with saying that if a society is going to change the critical mass must want it to change. ..and I think it’s still a long ways off in “old Siam”…
Review of Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens
“… Anna more generally saw Thai attitudes toward sexuality …”
This should read “Siamese attitudes”, I reckon. Can someone please tell from what point in history one can speak of Thai history. Wasn’t it Phibul who put the h in Tai?
The reassertion of the state
Like previous commentators, I think the issue is not so much what has been achieved but the potential for change that direct elections had. It has to be more that just an “irritant” otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to abolish them. Furthermore, the question that the author fails to ask is: Why now? I think the answer is obvious
Siamese dreams in the time of the junta
I’m commenting this post a bit late, but let me add my two cents given what I’ve seen happening in the past few months.
Any hopes of followers of the “Red Corruption” discourse that the coup and the junta could reduce corruption were misguided. I’m directly involved in a several multi-billion dollar projects requiring a number of regulatory approvals, and it’s now very clear that military proxies will be receiving significant kick-backs if those projects are to move forward. Just scan the newspapers and read between the lines: projects cancelled despite previously receiving regulatory approval and then resurrected with new developers and contractors, consolidation of regulatory authority, reassignments of dozens of senior civil servants, the list goes on and on. To be fair, I was prepared to pay kick-backs under the elected government as well. But in this “Green Corruption” era the corruption is completely unchecked – the pro-coup alliance are wallowing in hypocrisy, waiting for some crumbs, or are too afraid to speak out.
Captain Nat and the wheels of Thai justice
Aside from huffing and puffing about your surname and broadcasting you and your family’s reach at Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, you have NOT really answered my question TorrEnce (with the capital “E” is it)? Since you or your large family know quite a lot of important Northern people considering you/your wife’s relatives with the “police, army, government and Northern business people, was there even a single “big shot ya ba/heroin” drug trafficker at the North blacklisted and executed during Thaksin’s war on drugs?
Come to think of it the Shinawatras’ (see New Mandala’s very interesting article “The Shinawatra Family Tree” http://www.newmandala.org/2011/08/08/the-shinawatra-family-tree/) Northern roots and political influence go way way way back. I mention this to underscore the point that probably every big time Northern drug trafficker must be known and known intimately to Thaksin/Shinawatra political clan. I repeat, every single big time Northern drug trafficker, must already be intimately known to Thaksin himself … including their Burmese sources. But had Thaksin himself submitted his personal blacklist of these known big time traffickers? Or are/were these big time Northern traffickers under Thaksin’s ‘protection’, after ages of ‘family associations and business/personal dealings’ and the Northern blacklist only included, as R.N. England sagely suggested, the ‘unlucky ones’ who were business rivals of “traffickers under Thaksin’s protection”?
Despite TorrEnce claims of knowing the “Who’s Who” of Northern drug trafficking, the reality is nearly every person at Chieng Mai/Chieng Rai appear to know who are engaged in ya ba/heroin trafficking at the North, big or small time; see http://www.irrawaddy.org/shan/an-open-secret-an-illicit-trade-without-end.html.
—–
Excerpts: “that drug trafficking is an open secret–and a lucrative trade–in the region.
In conversations with several sources from narcotics circles, including drug dealers, addicts and former drug convicts, all said the drug business here is hardly hush-hush, and despite drug eradication efforts, there is no end in sight for the illegal trade.
Thai drug addict Aie Chai (not his real name), who lives in Fang, said he makes good money selling yaba, which he also consumes himself in order to work harder on his farm.
Fully etched with tattoos on his hands and legs, Aie Chai claimed the drug is a performance enhancer when it comes to manual labor. “Many farmers here also use yaba to work harder. But some buyers are teenagers. People here know who is selling yaba and where to get it. But they don’t talk about it, as it’s normal practice to them.”
Many dealers are arrested, some of them repeatedly. Several small-time sellers are also repeatedly jailed, then released. Aie Chai said he also was once arrested and temporarily detained. A bribe paid to police by his mother and sister was his extrajudicial ticket to freedom. His neighbor, Channat, who also requested that her real name not be used, agreed with Aie Chai. Pointing to several houses near her home, she said the owners of those neighboring residences also sold yaba. “Many of them get rich, own property and businesses because they sell yaba,” Channat said. “My aunt also got rich because of this [the drug trade]. Her husband is a big dealer. He is always in secret places as he is being hunted by police.” For Channat, it is something of a family trade. “My uncle is a big dealer,” she continued. “He met with Khun Sa [a Burmese warlord who died in 2007] in Burma. Now, he can’t stop doing this business. If he stops, he will be killed by his associates because he knows the drug network well …”
Captain Nat and the wheels of Thai justice
The name is
TorrEnce, get it right if you are going to use it! I here lived in this Corridor between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for 25 years. I know a lot of people, from government employees to businessmen to farmers, and this is my wifes home area, so she knows quite a lot of people, as she is also from a large family with relatives all around the North, farmers, police, army, govt employees, and business people.n There is no “inside intelligence”, I have been here, and have known people who were killed and with some, by whom.
Review of Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens
It’s possible that she was just rehashing old stories, but in my view it is more likely that she was telling the truth, and was vilified for doing so – a fate that has befallen many truth-tellers about Thailand over the centuries.
As I tried to make clear in my comments, the abuses against women in old Siam were by no means unique in a global context. But some countries confront and analyse their past and try to draw useful lessons from it. The Thai elite seem determined to erase the inconvenient details of their past, and to unfairly discredit anyone who challenges their mythologizing.
Review of Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens
there as simiiar ceremonies in Thailand today in house construction (with coins and flowers but not humans as far as I know-though there have been allegations….)
Is it not more likely Andrew that Anna .L was rehashing the Van Vliet account to spice up her stories? similar to the Taptim account?
However as there is still a market for mummified baby foetuses, human body parts and dried tiger penis etc in SE Asia where do we draw the line? Also bear in mind in Van Vliets day they were still burning witches at home and slaving whilst apparently criticising Siamese barbarities.
Wisdom of General Prayuth
Bangkok Post reports the “missing” rice did not amount to what is commonly considered a rounding error.
The reassertion of the state
Of course, Michael is right that many of the old crocodiles still rule, and that the “good examples” are few and far between. But I rather agree with Chris that those few good examples are opening people’s eyes to the possibility of political participation on the part of those who have little interest in messing with the old guard.
I’ve just spent a month in parts of NTT which I had last visited in 2012, well before the presidential elections. I find the political conversation in coffee stalls and markets has changed, has become far less about “orang gitu2 aja” and far more about the power of the vote. Michael suggests that power is infrequently used to achieve real change, and I agree. But the very fact that people are beginning to talk about it is [oops, WAS} surely an important interim step.
Thai Studies in Australia, redux
Not quite sure how Andrew can reorganise the Australian Academia and University system from Scotland, his obsession with lesse majeste is going nowhere. There are plenty of things to do and it could be a good idea if Thailand decides for itself without Andrew’s and the intellectual left we smile at every day.In Maha Sarakham we hear quite a move away from PTT and redshirt. There is good reason to believe this will not be a short lived Military regime.
Islam: A religion of peace
There is really no need to analyse Najib’s speech. Sometimes, I think he does not understand his own speech, being written by some highly paid speech writer for him to look good.
His speeches, not only does not have consistency, they also contradict his action at home in Malaysia. Just the very notion of his support of the “ALLAH” word use in Malaysia is enough to call him a “crap” artist
The reassertion of the state
Well said.
The reassertion of the state
This is a good realistic article. But my sense is that the abolition of direct elections is a sad event not because of what they have achieved since 2005 but what they only recently seemed on the verge of achieving – most notably the emergence of more independent civil society candidates outside the political elite like Jokowi and the ability of the electorate to more frequently oust corrupt and apathetic executives. In retrospect, these positive consequences of direct elections required time. But now they will be returned to the realm of the impossible with election via DPRDs.
Indian migrant workers in Malaysia – part 1
Pls track for me my roots:-
1. My grandfathers name is Mungilan.
2. My Uncle’s son’s name Varathan
3. My fathers name is Murugan s/o Mungilan
5. My father born in Arakkonam Village in
1898, Nemeli Post.
6. He left india under kangani system to
work as a labourer in Melaka. Kindly help me i want to visit Arakkonam Village to see my roots but how who can help. What information do you need to track my family in Arakkonam village in india. TQ kannan
Refusing to forget
Thank you for this timely article, Prof. Robinson, it’s wonderful to see Zubaidah Djohar’s poems published in English.
A few comments on the analysis:
“Rumoh Geudong” is actually a historical and physical space, not just a metaphorical one. It is the notorious former military post in Pidie, where hundreds were killed, tortured and raped, so it is the very symbol of violence against women.
Secondly, with all due respect to the thoughtful reflections and analysis here, my own reading (based on what I know from my 15 years of working on Aceh and studying questions of violence and memory) is slightly different. I feel that Zubaidah’s poems offer us a glimpse not so much of how “the brutish daily struggle of armed resistance carried out by men transforms them into ‘demon lovers’ who become cruel and indifferent to their own womenfolk”, but rather of the ways in which rape imposes upon both Acehnese women and men cycles of violation, shame, rejection and despair. Acehnese men are violated also, physically and directly and also through the violence against Acehnese women, which destroys their honour both as men and as Acehnese. It is not, then, in my opinion, so much about Acehnese men’s “cruelty and indifference” but rather (or, perhaps, also) about the how both women and men suffer from the conflict, but that they suffer differently and in ways that alienate each from the other and deepen cycles of violence and suffering.
Rohingya and national identities in Burma
To us the elephant in the room is the military elite, so the dog in the manger is perhaps more apt in this instance. And it doesn’t go, “Moo!”
Captain Nat and the wheels of Thai justice
Who vetted the ‘blacklist’ demanded by Thaksin that started the execution rampage, without due process, of thousands of ‘no name’ Thais during Thaksin’s war on drugs? It seems there was not a single big shot drug trafficker among the thousands killed ..
But maybe in Chiang Mai perhaps a well-known ya ba trafficker was blacklisted and executed … if the well-informed Ron Torrance could share his ‘inside intelligence’ of Thaksin’s ‘successful war on drugs’ in that area.